Florida politicians are the real frauds

That's part of the reason you have fewer days to vote early this year. (And why you're seeing long lines and waits.)

Legislators and Gov. Rick Scott said they wanted to make voting less convenient — "harder," according to one senator — as part of a systemwide crackdown on fraud.

Only here's the thing: They are full of it.

They never wanted to crack down on fraud. If they had, they would have focusedon the voting method where fraud most easily thrives — absentee ballots.

Think about it: With absentee ballots, no elections official ever lays eyes on many of the supposed voters. No one verifies ID — or even that the supposed voter is still alive.

In Florida, fraudulent absentee ballots have allowed corpses to vote — and prompted entire elections to be overturned.

Yet Scott and the Legislature did nothing to crack down on this little-regulated practice, originally developed for active-duty military personnel, yet now used by anyone who wants to do so.

Instead, they went after early voters — shortening the time from 14 days down to 8 — with legislators such as Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton saying: "I wouldn't mind making it harder to vote. It should not be easy."

So Republicans decided to clamp down only on early voting — in the name of combating "fraud" — while leaving the voting method most susceptible to fraud completely untouched.

I pointed out that farcical logic when the Legislature rammed this "reform" package through last year.

This month, the Miami Herald backed me up with an investigative report, titled: "Absentee ballots: Easy to cast, open to fraud."

The story chronicled Florida's sordid history of absentee fraud — including recent arrests of South Florida absentee "ballot brokers," campaign workers who filled out ballots for elderly or disabled residents who never even knew.

The main deterrent is an election official who spots mismatched signatures. (But even that can be a messy process, as the story on today's front page noted.)

Local elections officials generally argue that fraud really isn't the problem some politicians claim — but that absentee ballots are far more vulnerable to fraud than any in-person method.

Think about this: Scott claimed he was so worried about fraud that he ordered a statewide purge of voters that resulted in removing a grand total of 39 previous voters from the rolls.

Yet Scott hasn't lifted a finger to verify the legitimacy of 1.4 million absentee votes — almost all of which were cast without any in-person proof of their legitimacy.

Regular readers of this column know I try to call out both parties on political shenanigans. Both parties commit malfeasance. And I regularly remark as much.

But make no mistake: This effort is wholly Republican-orchestrated. (Note that I say "Republican" and not "conservative" — because I don't believe decent, principled conservatives support this kind of gamesmanship. In fact, I don't think most are even aware of it.)

Still, I'm sure there are some hyper-partisans who will try to defend this kind of selective crackdown. To those people, I offer you a challenge. Try to finish the following sentence:

"I believe Florida is right to crack down on early voting (where trained poll workers personally inspect ID's) while doing nothing to crack down on absentee voting (where scam artists don't have to prove they're casting legitimate votes) because …"

If you can finish that sentence straight-faced, you're either pathological … or a Florida legislator.